From the Blog

The new concept designs for St James Park are beautiful, but there’s no money to implement these proposals. The city council voted to channel 100 percent of all park fees from new downtown housing to St. James Park, and it still won’t cover the renovation (I voted against this). Instead, I would like to see the city outsource park maintenance…

When I ran for city council ten years ago, I campaigned on providing 401K retirements programs instead of pension plans for new city employees. Coming from the private sector, where companies have largely abandoned pension plans in favor of 401K’s, this seemed fiscally pragmatic. Then and now, public pension systems are costly and unsustainable. Costly, in that tax revenue spent…

San Jose should retain child pornography unit San Jose has long debated asking for help from other law enforcement agencies as a way to augment patrol staffing. This is not a new idea, as approximately 200 cities in California contract with another law enforcement agency. Unfortunately, the city council action Tuesday will remove staffing from the child pornography unit. Given…

The law is very clear in California: It is the responsibility of county governments to provide advanced life support services for residents. However, in San Jose, it is the city (specifically, the San Jose Fire Department) rather than the county that provides this vital service. San Jose taxpayers shoulder the burden of paying the overwhelming majority of the price tag…

The article “Outcry ensues over frail police communication network in wake of officer shooting” (Page 1A, March 28) is a sad but timely example of why the City of San Jose should and must have a laser-like focus on providing the essential services that are actually listed in the city charter. The proposed budget for next fiscal year creates a…

– Taisia McMahon & Councilmember Pierluigi Oliverio – Special to the Mercury News Behind Mr. T’s liquor store on Lincoln Avenue in Willow Glen is a former Union Pacific Railroad structure referred to as the trestle. The trestle first disrupted the Los Gatos Creek over a half-century ago when the railroad company, with no regard for the environment, inserted 95 chemically…

Growing up in Willow Glen, I have long heard people discuss how many vehicle lanes there should be on Lincoln Avenue. For some, the ideal would be to reduce vehicle traffic from four lanes to two, with the potential to add a middle turning lane or bike lanes. In doing so, we would be emulating other cities such as Campbell,…

Parents of All Political Stripes Agree The Sunday Internal Affairs column listed an incorrect dollar amount regarding the costs associated with implementing software restricting access to pornography on the children’s computers in our libraries. To be clear, there are three sets of computers in libraries: adults’, teenagers’, and children’s. Back in 2009, the cost to implement porn filters for both…

In my conversations with commercial developers, business owners, and those that would simply like to see more high-quality jobs, the most common complaint is that San Jose is a difficult city for conducting business. Our permit process is cumbersome, approval periods are unnecessarily long, and the amount of risk assumed by developers it too great. This is nothing new. Time…

Every election campaign is the same. Same big money from out of town, same special interest groups, and the same variety of falsehoods that range from the amusing to the absurd. The election for Mayor of San Jose will bring much of the same, and candidates will promise the world on a silver platter, and have you believe that they…

Recently much has been said about the next San Jose mayor becoming an “Education Mayor.” It is easy to make public statements that play upon parents with school-age children during an election year, but the fact remains that the city has absolutely no control over public schools. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Section 1400 of the San Jose city charter lays out…

The front-page article about “reuse” staffing a community centers in the Dec 13 issue of the The Resident, indicated that I was the only vote opposed to the return of the facilities being run by the city. However, the article did not explain the cost savings we are walking away from by doing this, and thus why I voted no….